Spider-Man's Long-lost Parent

The career of Steve Ditko, seen in 1959, has spanned five decades. (Courtesy of Britt Stanton)

Jordan RaphaelTimes Staff Writer

When "Spider-Man" credits roll on Friday, a name will appearalongside Stan Lee's that may elicit wild cheering from a fewaudience members and muted confusion from everyone else. The name isSteve Ditko. And the people applauding are comic-book fans thrilledthat Ditko, the original artist and co-creator of Spider-Man, hasbeen given proper credit--at long last--on the occasion of Spidey'sbig-screen debut.

Ditko won't be anywhere in the vicinity of the movie's hypemachine, though. While Lee, Spider-Man's other, better knownco-creator, is pumping the film at media events and premiere parties,Ditko will probably be at his cramped studio in midtown Manhattan,hunched over a drawing board working on more comics.

Then again, it's hard to know exactly what Ditko will be doing.The first rule of Steve Ditko is you don't talk about Steve Ditko.Not to the press, not even to friends or peers. Intensely private,Ditko is an enigmatic figure--the J.D. Salinger of comics. He avoidspublicity and hasn't given an interview in more than 35 years. Only afew published photographs of him are known to exist, and good luckfinding them.

"He's the exact opposite of me," says Lee, who has spent the last40 years as the public face of Spider-Man and the rest of Marvel
Comics' superhero pantheon.

Those who know Ditko say he prefers to let his work speak foritself. In a career spanning five decades, the 74-year-old artist hasproduced hundreds of comic books in genres ranging from horror toscience fiction to erotica. But nothing in Ditko's oeuvre has matchedthe popularity and success of his work on Spider-Man, which he andLee unleashed on the world in the early 1960s in "Amazing Fantasy"No. 15 and the first 38 issues of "Amazing Spider-Man."

With few exceptions, no comic-book series has been the source ofas much controversy among fans and historians. The debates includesuch esoteric questions as who dreamed up Spider-Man's webbing or hisbelt-mounted flashlight. Then there's the intriguing mystery of whyDitko suddenly departed the title in 1966 and never drew a Spider-Manstory again.

On their pioneering Spider-Man run, Lee and Ditko tweaked thetraditions of superhero-dom. Eschewing the tedious infallibility ofSuperman, they saddled the webslinger with real-life dilemmas--moneytroubles, a sick Aunt May--and somewhat bizarre superpowers. Leeenlivened the action with snappy, humorous dialogue; Ditko's moodyand naturalistic line work brought Spider-Man down to earth,emphasizing his humanity. In those formative years, the co-creatorsestablished the mythology that has guided Spider-Man's developmentever since. The Green Goblin, played by Willem Dafoe in the movie, isa Ditko-Lee creation.

Ditko's ink prints are especially visible in the film. "You cansee a lot of Ditko's influence in the way Spidey moves on the bigscreen--the classic poses and movements are all up there," says"Spider-Man" producer Laura Ziskin.

The film credit reads, "Based on the Marvel Comic Book by Stan Leeand Steve Ditko." That may not seem very significant, but to Ditkofans it represents a long-awaited validation. In one of thoseinjustices for which the comics industry is famous, Ditko has notreceived any royalties from the billion-dollar franchise based onSpider-Man because he co-created the character on a work-for-hirebasis.

More important to his fans, there has long been a publicmisconception that Stan Lee was the sole creator ofSpider-Man--fostered by a combination of Lee's grandstanding, Ditko'sreclusiveness and Marvel's practice of not giving credit to theoriginal creators of its heroes. In the March issue of thelong-running "Amazing Spider-Man," Marvel listed Ditko's name on thetitle page for the first time since 1966. Series editor Axel Alonsosays the credit was a "tip of the hat to Ditko" that may appear againaround the time of the movie, but not as a matter of company policy.

Personal Details About Ditko Are Scarce

The personal details that are known about Steve Ditko would fit onone side of an index card. He was born Nov. 2, 1927, in Johnstown,Pa., the son of Eastern European immigrants. As a child, he was a fanof Batman and the Spirit. He has a brother named Patrick. In 1945, hegraduated from Greater Johnstown High School. Five years later, heset off for New York and enrolled in the Cartoonists and IllustratorsSchool, where he studied under Golden Age Batman artist JerryRobinson. He is a lifelong bachelor, and he has no children.

Gary Groth is editor in chief of the Comics Journal, an industrypublication noteworthy for its expansive, in-depth interviews. He hasknown Ditko for more than 20 years and has been trying to land aninterview for at least as long. "I don't think we're going to getone," Groth says.

According to friends and former collaborators, Ditko's life hasbeen heavily influenced by Objectivism, the philosophy of rationalthought and individual free will sketched out in Ayn Rand's novels"The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged." Ditko sees the world instark black and white, with no gray in between. As such, he does notcompromise on issues that contradict his artistic or ethicalsensibilities.

Marv Wolfman, a comics writer and the creator of Blade, workedwith Ditko on the Marvel comic "Machine Man" in the late 1970s.Wolfman remembers that Ditko was more than willing to discussSpider-Man and his supporting cast, but that the artist nixed anyattempts to incorporate the wallcrawler into the new series. "Healways felt that Spidey should never be older than 16, because thatwas the last year a kid could totally screw up," Wolfman says.

Affront to Artistic Principles Prompts Anger

Subsequent efforts by Marvel editors and writers, including Lee,to bring Ditko back to the Spider-Man fold were similarly rebuffed."He never wanted to do Spider-Man again," says Jack C. Harris, whoedited Ditko at DC Comics.

Ditko's acquaintances describe him as polite, friendly andsoft-spoken. But Ditko also has a dark side, which emerges mostacutely when his principles are affronted. In one incident, hestopped doing a series and furiously chastised the publisher becauseof a slight color error on the cover of the first issue.

Author Cat Yronwode, a former comics publisher, endured Ditko'swrath when she tried to write a book about him in the mid-1980s. WhenDitko found out that Yronwode had interviewed his brother, heexploded. "He felt that I had invaded his privacy."

Soon after, Yronwode's manuscript for "The Art of Steve Ditko" andall her notes were destroyed in a house flood. "That was the end ofit," she says. "I felt that for whatever reason, maybe it was Godspeaking, I was not meant to do this."

True to form, Ditko declined to be interviewed for this article,as did his brother.

Ditko's first published work, "Black Magic" No. 27, appeared in1953. During the late '50s, he worked with Lee at Atlas, thepredecessor to Marvel Comics, on short horror and fantasy storieswith titles like "Zzutak: The Thing That Shouldn't Exist" and "Fearin the Night." "He helped me out so many times when we had anemergency and I needed an artist to do something quickly," Leerecalls. "He was a joy and a pleasure to work with."

Lee and Ditko's first Spider-Man story was actually an experiment.In the early 1960s, Marvel had pulled out of a decade-long slump andwas flush with the success of its 1961 title "The Fantastic Four."Editor Lee wanted to follow up with more heroes, beginning with anerdy high school student who gains the proportionate strength of aspider in a freak lab accident. Lee's publisher, Martin Goodman,hated the idea, particularly the insect theme and the fact that thehero was a teenager. Lee compromised by slotting Spider-Man'sinaugural tale into the final issue of a canceled fantasy series.

Spider-Man Co-Creators Begin to Disagree

Initially, Lee assigned the art chores to legendary comics artistJack Kirby, with whom he had co-created the Fantastic Four. Kirbyreturned with several pages of bombastic heroic renderings Lee didn'tthink were quite right, so he turned to Ditko. "There was somethingabout the way he drew," Lee says. "It had a realistic style, itwasn't too exaggerated or too over the top."

"Amazing Fantasy" No. 15 hit newsstands in August 1962. When theissue's staggering sales figures came back a few months later, Leegave the character his own series. "Amazing Spider-Man" debuted inMarch 1963, and almost immediately became a hit.

Behind the scenes, though, the co-creators began to disagree onthe title's direction. After a few dozen issues, Ditko was plottingthe book himself and turning the penciled pages over to Lee, whofilled in the dialogue. "I didn't know what he'd be bringing me. Itwas almost like doing a crossword puzzle," Lee says.

By the time Roy Thomas joined the company as assistant editor in1965, Ditko and Lee were no longer speaking to each other, usingintermediaries to communicate. "There wasn't a lot of anger, it wasjust that they got to arguing so much over the plot lines," Thomasrecalls. Then, one day in early 1966, Ditko walked into Marvel'soffices on Madison Avenue, delivered a stack of pages, and quit. Theonly person who knows for sure why Ditko left is Ditko.

The lore repeated in comic book circles is that the final strawwas a dispute over the unmasking of the Green Goblin. Ditko wantedhim to turn out to be someone who hadn't been seen before; Lee arguedthat he should be an established character so readers wouldn't feelcheated.

Lee says he remembers the disagreement over the Green Goblin butdoesn't think that's what prompted Ditko's resignation. "I reallydon't know why he left to this day, and he's never told me," Leesays.

For many years, Ditko remained silent. Recently, however, he beganwriting a series of essays in the Comics, a small-circulationnewsletter about the history of comic books. The reason he broke hissilence, Ditko writes, was due to a few public incidents, including a1998 Time magazine article that credited Lee as the "creator" ofSpider-Man.

Much of his writing is given over to odd Ayn Randian ramblingslike the following: "Too many people choose to be unjust takers intheir dealing, transactions with others. They want, demand, theunearned and undeserved."

But on the matter of why he gave up the series, he writes only, "Iknow why I left Marvel but no one else in this universe knew or knowswhy. It may be of a mild interest to realize that Stan Lee chose notto know, to hear why, I left." Lee is aware of Ditko's resentment. Afew years ago, Lee tried to set the record straight by sending Ditkoa letter in which he said, "I have always considered Steve Ditko tobe Spider-Man's co-creator." Ditko's response appeared in the May2001 issue of the Comics: "'Considered' means to ponder, look atclosely, examine, etc. and does not admit, or claim, or state thatSteve Ditko is Spider-Man's co-creator."

"At this point, I don't know what to say," Lee says.

"I don't want this to turn into a feud, because I love the guy.But I don't know what to do to make him happy."